OUR TEAM
We had started off as a team of 6 people in 2018. 5 of us have been working with young adults with disabilities in Camphill Communities in the UK. In Summer 2020 Zsuzsa Filipov-Soo and Marta Moldovan have moved back to Romania to coordinate the project on sight. Agnes Osvath always lived in the region and she is an accountant and HR expert.
Kinga-Imola Tamas, clinical psychologist, joined us in March 2021 to be Zsuzsa’s assistant in developing the work further on-site. Our intention is that we all return to Romania in order to join the provision based on our experiences, expertise and ideals gained through our work in Camphill. We are aware that there is a gap in such services in Romania, and that helping to fill this gap is an urgent and on-going need.
Zsuzsa Filipov-Soo
I grew up in Szekelykeresztur (Cristuru-Secuiesc), Romania. In 2005 I completed my law degree in Budapest, Hungary. In 2008 I finished a Master Degree in European Company Law in Goettingen,
Germany. In 2003/2004 I spent a year in a Camphill community as a volunteer in Aberdeen, Scotland. From January 2009 until July 2020 I lived and worked in Cairnlee House, Camphill Schools Aberdeen, a residential care provision, where I have been supporting young adults with different learning disabilities. I attended a 3-year seminar about creating homes in residential, community settings. I have gained qualifications in Management and Leadership in Social Care. My tasks covered a wide range of responsibilities from running different craft workshops, producing plays, organising celebrations for festivals, day to day management, being part of the recruitment of co-workers, liaising with social authorities, medical professionals and parents, overseeing the therapies and medicines. In July 2020 I moved back to Romania in order to carry on developing the Day Centre. I am married to Dimitar and we have 3 young children.
Dimitar Filipov-Soo
I grew up in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. I studied Physics for 3 years in Goettingen, Germany. Since 2008 I have lived and worked in Cairnlee House, a Camphill community for young adults with special needs in Aberdeen, Scotland. During these 11 years I have gained experiences in different areas: in the organic garden and the woodwork as a helper and as a workshop leader, I have helped our young adults in different realms of life, I organised festivals, I organised and lead study groups and other activities. Together with my colleagues, we lead a weekly outdoor, nature outing for 20 people. I have gained a university degree in Social Pedagogy/Curative Education. In June 2021 I moved to Romania in order to join Zsuzsa and our children there and to bring with me the social impulse and spirituality of Camphill and of Social Pedagogy.
Agnes Soo
I was born and raised in Szekelykeresztur (Cristuru-Secuiesc). At the age of 18 I left to do volunteer work in a Camphill Community in England where I lived and worked with learning disabled children. I
stayed for four years, during which time I completed the Camphill Course in Curative Education. I also became interested in Art Therapy during this time, returned to Eastern Europe and in 2008 completed a Masters Degree in Fine Arts in Budapest. Since 2010 I have lived in Scotland, first in Newton Dee Village Community, then in Beannachar Camphill Community, where I am House
Coordinator for eight young adults with learning disabilities. My partner and I are deeply connected to this work with young adults, and I have for many years had a vision to bring this experience and commitment back to my home country.
Jim Hornby
I have lived and worked in Camphill Communities in the U.K. since 1985. As a trained ‘Steiner Teacher’ I first came to Camphill to work with Learning Disabled children as a Class Teacher.
Alongside this I had been a House Coordinator, responsible for the care and well-being of Learning Disabled children, adolescents, young adults and the elderly. Through my many years in Camphill I have fulfilled different roles and gained qualifications and experience in many realms of this work.
Currently I live and work at Beannachar Camphill Community in Aberdeen, where I am a member of
the Management Group and a joint House Coordinator. I am personally responsible for organising and supervising the work of our craft, land and service workshops, and I run a part-time leather workshop myself. Agnes is my partner and together with our two young children we plan to move to Transylvania in the near future.
Marta Moldovan
I was born and I grew up in Kolozsvar (Cluj), Romania, then as an adult I moved to Szekelykeresztur. I have gained qualifications in Window dressing and shop sign designing, later on in female and male tailor/dress making, including the skills in designing patterns.
In 2010, at the suggestion of my younger daughter, I visited a Camphill community in Ireland.
Following this, I moved to Scotland, to the Beannachar Camphill Community, where I have lived and worked together with young adults with special needs ever since. For 6 years I had worked in the Weavery as a workshop assistant. In Autumn, 2016 I started my own work group, the Wool Workshop, where we process the wool from the sheep of our community (washing, carding, spinning, weaving, felting). In July 2020 I returned to Romania. Based on the experiences of the past years, I would like to support the work of the above team.
Osváth Ágnes
I grew up and went to school in Székelykeresztúr (Cristuru-Secuiesc).
After I finished High School, I began to work at a special school with children – some of them orphans with different kinds of disabilities, aged 6-14. This is when I met for the first time the problem of how much the people with special needs are excluded from our society. In most cases these children stay at home with one of the parents, because they cannot manage the normal school. This also means that the caring parent gives up fully her/his employment and provides full care for the child. I studied accountancy and business informatics, but I continued to be interested in the integration of people
with special needs into our society. At present I work in my own office as an accountant and human resources referent. In 2018 Zsuzsa approached me with the request of administrative support in the process of creating the Három Galamb Association. I accepted the invitation and became associate
member in the Három Galamb. At the moment I look after the books of the association and support the project with the necessary administrative tasks in Romania. I live with my partner and daughter in Kisgalambfalva (Porumbenii Mici).
Kinga-Imola Tamás
I grew up in Betfalva, in a village next to Székelykeresztúr/Cristuru-Secuiesc, and studied in Cluj Napoca at the Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences ,on Hungarian line. Later, I got my master degree on the Romanian line as a clinical psychologist at the Dimitrie Cantemir University from Târgu MureÈ™. Since 2015 I had worked as a psychologist at different associations from Târgu MureÈ™ and villages in its area. Being in the workfield, I met many different target groups: vulnerable and Roma children, young adults with special needs, elderly people. My task was to make assessments of needs of the marginalised people, to assure individual and group psycho-social development, psychological counselling, managing prevention programs about different subjects, and applying the instruments of non-formal education. I participated in many continuous professional trainings in the social field, improving my work’s qualitative indicators. In 2019 I got new roles, becoming a wife and a mother. My professional activities were replaced by motherhood, and in the meantime I returned to my roots moving back to Betfalva. In 2021 I met Zsuzsa and the Három Galamb Association from Kisgalambfalva, and here my life has reached another milestone.
Tünde Emese Dénes
I was born is Sepsiszentgyörgy. I graduated from the history-philology department of Mikes Kelemen Theoretical Lyceum, after which I took the world by my neck to find out what life has in store for me.
I graduated as a building sculptor in Budapest, then I graduated as a Cultural Anthropologist at BTK in Miskolc. During my college years, I bathed with the Ars Topia Foundation several times. That’s when I first heard about biodynamic farming. I put it in my bag and continued my journey around the world. Life has brought me to the idea of biodynamics in 2010 and I applied for a two-year biodynamic apprenticeship in England in two different Camphill communities.
It is in this environment that I have experienced for the first time in my life that our fellow human beings with intellectual disabilities are not hidden under their arms, but live by nature in a protected, developmental environment where the world can be and is about themselves. I have become richer from this world, I have learned a lot. With the production of biodynamic vegetables and spices, which became my profession, I volunteered in different farms in my warehouse, I took part in starting projects, I ran a garden, I was looking for a community where I could live / work with like-minded individuals. It seemed in vain.
While on a course, I came across the goal, plans, and association of the Three Pigeons Association and felt that in this not-easy mission, I had found something of what I had been looking for for so long.
Creating a biodynamic vegetable and fruit garden is my task in which we can work together with our disabled fellow human beings.